Noach - Shoshana Boyd Gelfand

Made in God's Image: For Better and for Worse

Shoshana Boyd Gelfand is currently a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Israel. She was ordained from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1993 and is the former Vice-President and Acting Director of the Wexner Heritage Foundation in New York.

What happens when you look in the mirror and don't like what you see? That experience can be a challenge for the best of us, even (dare we suggest?) for God. Of course, God cannot literally look in the mirror. Even figuratively, it is difficult for the Almighty to see His own reflection. Perhaps the closest God can come is by looking at the creature He created in His own image – us. Indeed, this is one possible read of the story of Noah: it is an account of God's realization that both He and his creation have a dark side which needs to be tempered.

From the very beginning of the Noah story, God's behavior mirrors ours. God's decision to destroy the world is instigated by the presence of "hamas," which means "violence." Ironically, God's response to our violence is to use violence Himself to destroy everything and everyone, with the exception of Noah and his family. Noah and the inhabitants of the ark are saved, while the rest of the world perishes.

It is hard to picture what Noah experienced during the flood. The closest images I can imagine were those shown on BBC and CNN during the tsunami. Some have suggested that Noah's similar experience led him to suffer from a type of post-traumatic stress syndrome, which is why he ultimately plants a vineyard and becomes drunk upon disembarking from the ark. It is his attempt to numb the pain that he has experienced. However, the very first action Noah takes following the flood is not to plant the vineyard, but rather to offer a sacrifice to God.

It makes sense that Noah wishes to give thanks for being saved, and in the context of ancient civilization, sacrifice is the obvious way to give thanks. The fact, however, that the first act following the flood is again one of violence (killing an animal) is significant. Even more significant, however, is God's reaction to this violent act. God is pleased; He enjoys the smell of the sacrifice. At this moment of epiphany, God realizes that there is a part of man which is violent by nature, a part which cannot be wholly contained. Thus, God vows: Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devising of man's mind are evil from his youth (Genesis 9:21).

Thus, God recognizes that people are made with an inherent impulse towards evil. But is it possible that God, too, shares this same impulse? After all, not only are we created in God's image, but God's reaction to our violence (hamas) was to mirror us and unleash violence of His own in the form of the flood. Is it possible that, as a result of the Noah story, God realizes something about His own primal urge towards violence? This might explain His choice of symbols for the covenant He makes with Noah. Were the covenant simply meant to reassure Noah that the world would never again be destroyed, why would God choose a symbol of violence, a bow, to represent that covenant? There must be a deeper meaning in the transformation of a violent weapon into the symbol that the world will never again be destroyed. Perhaps the covenant is truly two-sided: designed both to reassure Noah and also to remind God to channel his own urge towards violence into something as harmless (and beautiful) as a rainbow.

The story of Noah therefore raises for us not only the question of God's nature, our nature, and the relationship between them. It also forces us to ask how we can take our very human (and divine) urges and channel them so as not to cause any more harm than necessary. Would that we human beings could follow God's example and transform our urge towards violence into the beauty and the promise of the rainbow. Then we truly would live up to our potential of being made in God's image.